Killing The Queen

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 27 August 2004 19:40:06

No, I'm not plotting a dastardly international crime.

The queen I killed this morning had a rather waspish personality.

That's the selling point for fire ant bait/poison. The workers and foragers bring it home to the nest -- it's food, it's got things in it they eat -- looks like a "good-for-you" breakfast cereal, all mealy -- and they carry it home and serve it to Her Majesty and she's a gone pecan.

I was on the phone with a friend this morning, wandering around. Thank God for cordless phones. I have been a pacer-on-the-phone all my life, and used to make a hash out of the phone cord.

Anyway, there I was, passing in and out of my back door, enjoying the day, when I realized that the back door light fixture had a tenant. And she had a couple of attendants. Wasps, you know. Paper wasps of some sort, I suppose.

She was larger and had a few more decorative marks than the others, so I assumed she was The Boss. So I let my buddy go off the phone, and I got her with the long-distance wasp & hornet spray.

She was only a foot away from my head there. I had to get rid of her. I never like it, though. They aren't too aggressive, and many wasps hunt caterpillars. So I feel bad when they're too close like that and get inside often. Then they've got to go. Could you see accidentally sitting on one?

Just the simple act of living here, going outside, means you step into The Great Outdoors. Nature all around you. You're surrounded. As Richard Pryor once said, whispering in awe about Nature -- "You look around... and it makes you wanna... sh*t." It's overwhelming, Nature is, I think he meant, heh.

And I know where to find things to eat. Dandelions and ground cherries and Jerusalem artichokes, crawfish and cattails and roses and pears. Wild and going-wild things.

I missed all that when I lived up North. Yeah, there were deer galore, much bigger than our little swamp whitetails, since they get to raid the fields of corn and soybeans up there. I heard many of the does had twin fawns every year because they were so well-fed. But, well, one wants a more balanced diet than just venison.

I am the one around here that does the slaughtering and butchering, when it's to be done. We're not raising any livestock right now, but have before and will again I hope.

I hammer the poor bunnies and chop off the chickens' and ducks' heads. I wonder how long I will have to do that before I lose the sadness that it had to be done? No qualms about killing the little fuzzbuckets. That's why I raised them. But it's so sad, still. I make it a point to kill them instantly.

It touches me, killing things. I can't help it. I even felt badly when I looked that queen wasp in her pretty face and sprayed her.